Looking for the book?
We have the summary! Get the key insights in just 10 minutes.

Rating

8Overall

9
Applicability

8
Innovation

8
Style

Recommendation

Sustainability professor Paul F. Steinberg studies social rules and civic governance in terms of how they affect the environment. He alerts readers to something vitally important hiding in plain sight: Nations, regions, local administrations and society itself create and change the formal and informal rules that protect or exploit the Earth. These rules and regulations affect natural resources, deforestation, polluting emissions, pesticides, recycling, water rights, and much more. Such rules don’t appear spontaneously. Organizations, people and coalitions debate and fight for them fiercely. Many rules seem perverse and most citizens believe they can’t do anything to change them. But they can. Rules are mutable and, Steinberg says, people must work to change them in order to save the planet. getAbstract recommends Steinberg’s overview to executives, futurists, concerned citizens, and current or potential activists frustrated with the pace of change.

In this summary, you will learn

How social rules and civic regulations work,

Why rules are necessary,

Which rules are dangerous and susceptible to improvement, and

How to change the rules or create new ones to benefit the environment.

About the Author

Paul F. Steinberg is professor of sustainability and environmental policy at California’s Harvey Mudd College, where he directs the Social Rules Project. He also wrote Comparative Environmental Politics and Environmental Leadership in Developing Countries.

Summary

Rules Can Change Organized society would collapse quickly without rules. If you doubt it, try living in a country that has few rules or that enforces them randomly and arbitrarily. Rules operate for good or bad, but you have the power to change them.